Thursday, August 17, 2017

This
week I noted that the show has been on the air for a year. I spoke with Don Schmitt. We covered the
Roswell festival and how it had evolved into more of a circus than a symposium
on what had happened in Roswell so long ago. The city sees it as a way of
attracting tourists and the International UFO Museum and Research Center thinks
of it as more of an opportunity to contribute something to UFO research. You
can listen to the show here:

We
did touch on the article that I had just published about Brigadier General
Arthur Exon and his discussion of special teams deployed to investigate UFOs.
It suggests the Air Force was taking the problem a little more seriously than
they would have us all believe. For those of you too lazy to scroll down
through one article, you can read the post here:

We
also talked, briefly about the beginnings of MUFON and how Walt Andrus had
started the organization in the late 1960s. We did lament the slow evolution
from a UFO research group into a platform for too many New Age messages, but
then, that was just us.

(Blogger’s Note: Before anyone
misinterprets this post, I am not defending John Ventre’s racist rant, only his
right to make it. That is a real but sometimes overlooked distinction. If we
begin to limit free speech by labeling it as “hate speech,” and deny a person the
right to make a racist rant, how long will it be before someone else decides
that he or she doesn’t think we should be talking about UFOs and a government
cover up of the information because that is an attack on the government that could
be helping our enemies ((whoever that might be and, BTW, an allegation slung by
some skeptics), so such speech should be banned… or how long will it be before
someone proposes that those who engage in what others might consider as hate
speech should be arrested? Free speech allows us to say anything we wish and
free speech allows me to disagree with things you might say… Yes, there are
often consequences, but when we begin to label parts of free speech as
something else, we open the door to censorship.)

Back
on The Newsroom, Will McAvoy, the
anchor of the fictional News Night, declared that he had a mission to civilize.
He got the idea from Don Quixote, a somewhat delusional old knight with a
similar mission. I always thought this was a good idea, especially with all the
nastiness that has been going around in various circles, including the UFO
community. I have never figured out why it is wrong to disagree with some
people. If I express an opinion that is counter to what they believe, their
tactic is to demand and to attack. It never seems to cross their minds that I
have the right to my opinion, the right to express that opinion and they have
the right to challenge that opinion with facts but not with nastiness, personal
attacks or bullying.

John Ventre

A
case on point here is the John Ventre fiasco that started when he posted a
racist rant to Facebook triggered by some article or program description that
appeared on a Netflix site or a review of a program available on Netflix. A
number of people objected to the rant, and Jan Harzan, the executive director
of MUFON made it worse by suggesting those who objected were haters. That
caused a few to reject MUFON and Harzan finally, belatedly, fired Ventre from
his positions in MUFON.

Ventre
told me that the trouble had expanded beyond his MUFON associations and that
some were sending emails or messages to his various contacts which were
affecting his financial situation in a negative fashion. He thought that was
dirty pool, and there is something to be said for that. I did a little checking
and found that his claim was not far off the mark. He had been cut from the
list of speakers on the alien cruise, for example, because, what he told me,
was they were afraid others might not attend or other speakers might quit.

Jan Harzan

So
now we drop into an argument about the First Amendment and how far we’re
allowed to go with free speech, which, or course, sounds somewhat counter
intuitive. Ventre was free to post his rant, whether the information and
statements to which he was objecting were accurate or not (which means some
have suggested it was a “fake” news post). But he must accept the consequences
of such a rant, knowing that it will offend some portion of the population. I
found it offensive, and don’t mind saying as much. But that is the point where
I stop.

In
the world of the UFO (and in many other worlds) that is not the stopping point.
There were those who felt it necessary to contact others and suggest that
Ventre should not be employed by them or invited to speak to their
organizations because of these racist views. Frankly, that is going too far. If
those organizations learned of his bigoted view and terminated their association
with him because they found his words offensive, that is one thing. But
contacting them as a way of harming Ventre because you disagreed with him, that
is something else.

Why
do I say that?

The
first thing that comes to mind is that one of those who found a home on the UFO
lecture circuit had spent six years in prison for child molestation. There
wasn’t a message from the man that I cared to hear because of that, but I would
never think to contact his sponsors or those who invited him to speak because of
his conviction. I wouldn’t attempt to
get them to cancel his appearance. I just would not attend and if he was there,
I would not interact with him. My choice.

Others,
though, go out of their way to cause trouble for those whose beliefs don’t
match with theirs. A case on point is Philip Klass. Years ago, I had suggested
that Klass had done just that… he had called or written employers suggesting,
for example, Dr. James McDonald, had used Navy funds to research UFOs. The
allegation wasn’t exactly true, but the Navy cancelled a number of McDonald’s
contracts for that reason. You can read the whole posting here:

The
other thing that I learned during this admittedly short investigation was that
one of those might not have been overly offended by Ventre’s rant, but saw this
as an opportunity for some payback. Ventre had attacked him and his friend for
some time and now was the chance to get even.

Would
I have taken the chance?

I
like to think, “No.” I have had a couple of chances and in one of them, I did
take the opportunity. In others, it just seemed to be pilling on. So, the
answer is that I have done it in the past, but in the world today, I think I
would just ignore it and move on. The best example for today is that I haven’t
published the name of the pedophile here… most know who it is and the point is
now moot anyway.

Ventre
suffered the consequences for what he had said (posted) and he has lost the
positions of importance that he held in MUFON. An organization cannot stand the
sort of bigoty expressed in the rant. Society should be quick to condemn that
bigoty. Free speech doesn’t mean that you can say anything without consequence,
but it should not result in others using it to damage an individual. That sort
of thing inhibits free speech. Besides, he, or she, can do that all by his or
herself by simply saying or posting those sorts of things.

We
all have choices to make and if we are offended by a point of view, then we are
not required to any attend lectures given by those with that offending point of
view. We are not required to share the stage, the venue, a book byline or even
talk with that individual, but we should not call their business partners and
contacts and should not attempt to get their invitations to speak cancelled
because that smacks of suppression of free speech. Disagree with their
investigation methods, argue for a rational point of view on the cases, dislike
their opinions but do not suggest that their rants are a reason to interfere
with their lives.

Yes,
I know that I haven’t made the point as well as I might. I am suggesting a
little civility in our interactions with others. I am suggesting that we don’t
have to resort to dirty tricks and the get even mentality. I am suggesting that
Ventre might have suffered enough for an ill-advised rant that seemed to expose
his bigoty. I am suggesting there has been enough of a consequence for his rant
without most of us using it as an excuse for revenge, and yes, I know for a
fact that this happened.

Tuesday, August 15, 2017

As
happens all too often, as I’m searching for something else, I stumble onto a
document that helps explain information I had found in the past. Brigadier
General Arthur Exon, who was the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base commander, a
position similar to that of a mayor, told me during an interview on May 19,
1990, that he was responsible for dispatching aircraft to carry investigators
to important

Brigadier General Arthur Exon.

UFO sightings. He said:

Well,
the way this happened to me is that I would get a call and say that the crew or
the team was leaving and they knew… there was such and such a time they wanted
an airplane and pilots to take “X” number of people to wherever, you know. They
might be gone two or three days or might be gone a week. The would come back
and that would be the end of it. So, there would be certain people in FTD [ATIC
evolved into FTD in 1961] that would lay the missions on… I know they went out
to Montana and Wyoming and the northwest states a number of times in a year and
a half… They went to Arizona once or twice.

These
special teams, or these people, would apparently come from around the United
States and their assignment was to investigate a UFO sighting according to Exon.
He didn’t have much in the way of details about these special flights, but the
implication I took away from this was that the teams, or the team members, were
a specially trained group who were investigating UFOs at a higher level than
Project Blue Book. It was clear that they weren’t part of the Blue Book
operation.

We
(Don Schmitt and I, who first interviewed Exon) asked if the men were assigned
to Wright-Patterson. Exon said, “No. They would come from Washington, D.C.” He
also said that the team would be made up of eight, maybe fifteen people, the
number probably dictated by the sighting they were investigating. The idea was
that if anyone checked, they would learn that the team had been dispatched from
Wright-Patterson as a way of disguising the nature of this somewhat secret
activity.

During
my interview with Exon, I wanted to know if he knew who the controlling agency
or agencies were. I thought FTD was one of those agencies, but Exon said, “I
don’t know they were controlling but I know where the assignments came from.”

I
asked, “That was basically your control? FTD?”

He
said, simply, “Yeah.”

The
conclusions that I drew, and the conclusions that Don drew, were that teams,
controlled at a different level, but that were not assigned to Blue Book were
called in for special investigations. This, according to Exon, was in 1960 and
1961.

But
it turns out, according to the documentation that I have just found, this
assumption is not true. Oh, the documents were there in the Project Blue Book
files for anyone to find who scanned through the boxes and boxes of data as it
is contained on microfilm. As, I say, I was looking for something else when I
found this.

According
to the documents, in a draft of a staff study that was declassified in 1969 but
suggested in a document dated December 17, 1958, that:

To
provide a flexible investigative force which will not cause a particular drain
on any one office within ATIC [think FTD at this point] the Commander has
approved the establishment of a volunteer force which will work under the
direction of the Aerial Phenomena Group of the Air Science Division when
actually engaged in field investigation of UFO sightings. The general ground
rules for their employment are as follows:

A
total group of from 18 to 20 volunteers will be selected from company grade
officers [lieutenants and captains] and NCO’s presently assigned within ATIC.
This group will for the most part be people who do not have much opportunity to
travel during the normal course of their duties. Once selected they will be
given a 20 hour course of instruction in interrogative and investigative procedures
and will be checked out on equipment pertinent thereto [the class syllabus was
included in the documentation]. Once trained two of these individuals will be
placed on alert each week to undertake such investigations as may arise during
the week. Orders required for TDY [temporary duty] travel will be processed by
the Aerial Phenomena Group citing funds programmed by that Group for such
travel. A separate project nick-named “Horse Fly” [which is the first time that
I have heard of this project] will be established to provide military airlift
for investigators to and from the nearest Air Force installation to point of
UFO sighting. Flyaway kits of equipment will be issued by and specific flight
arrangements will be made by the Aerial Phenomena Group.

It
is estimated that each investigator can plan on about 5 TDY trips of 3 days
duration per year.

FTD Building at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.Photo courtesy of USAF.

The
officer who signed the document was William E. Boyd, who was a colonel at the
time and listed as the Chief of Staff at ATIC. Although what I found was a draft,
there was additional discussion about this later but it apparently was
implemented. While the suggestion is that the alert teams would be made up of
two individuals, there was nothing in the original document to suggest that the
deployment teams were restricted to the two people on alert. This sounds
suspiciously like the teams that Exon spoke about when he talked to me, though
he seemed to have overestimated the size. They didn’t come from Washington, D.C
as he suggested, but they were not all consolidated in a single office within
ATIC. They would come from a number of locations within ATIC to deploy into the
field.

Given
that the documents were originally classified (confidential, I believe), and
given the nature of the assignment, I don’t believe that there was any reason
for Exon to have denied the request for the assets needed. It would have come
from inside ATIC [or later FTD], or possibly from the Pentagon, authorizing the
use of military equipment to move the personnel into the field. Since it
involved specific intelligence, which in this case would be a UFO sighting or
landing, there would be no reason to brief Exon on the specific mission. The
request would have the proper authorization, and in fact, given the nature of
it, and the various authorizations approved, there would be no reason for Exon
to handle this personally. Someone on his staff could certainly have made the
arrangements and if there were questions about the authorizations, those might
have been bumped up to Exon for resolution, but I doubt that would be
necessary. This suggests the reason that Exon was rather vague on the nature of
the assignments. He wouldn’t be doing the work himself, one of his staff did,
and Exon was probably briefed on this, as he would be on other aspects of the
operations at Wright-Patterson that fell under his area of authority. At the
time, this would not have been a big deal, but the routine movement of assets
to a location where their expertise would be of value.

This
means, I suppose, that we shouldn’t draw any specific conclusions about the
nature of these teams, simply because we now know about their formation, their
purpose, and their deployments. They were sent to investigate UFO sightings
that would require the expertise that these officers and NCOs brought to the
table based on their 20 hours of classroom work so that they knew, at least in
a rudimentary sense, what they were doing.

What
I don’t know at this point is where their reports would have been sent. Probably
to the Aerial Phenomena Group, which would have been housed at ATIC and then
FTD when the name change came about. All I really know is that the teams were
formed and were apparently deployed on a number of investigations. While all
this is interesting, it seems to lessen the importance of the information
supplied by Exon, but it does give another avenue of investigation. It will be
interesting to see if I can find the results of those investigations that Exon
mentioned.

Monday, August 14, 2017

As many of you know, on Sunday nights, I am tuned into Game of Thrones on HBO. I communicate with Rich Reynolds about the program and we discuss, via email, our thoughts on each week's episode. On Saturday night I had emailed him that there were 27 hours before the next installment and he noted that he had his popcorn ready. After the "Spoils of War" episode that saw the deployment of one of the dragons (Drogon, if you must know), we had talked about Dani having complete air superiority, and this week Cersei Lannister learned that they could not defeat Dani because she had three dragons...

But not long after the latest episode aired, I learned that Rich had not seen it. He had been in the emergency room with what he termed a mini-stroke. This morning I learned that he'd had an MRI and that he would be in the hospital for a couple of days. It sounds as if the stroke was not life threatening (if that is really possible) and that a friend had recorded the episode for him to watch once he gets back home.

He asked me to post something about this. I suppose it was so that his followers, on his various blogs and Facebook pages would know that he would be out of the loop for a couple of days. I know that most of us wish him a speedy and complete recovery, and that we all hope that he can return to his blogs in the near future.

Saturday, August 12, 2017

In
keeping with the tradition that no good deed goes unpublished, and as a way of
explaining how I was dragged into this nasty fight over the reality of the
Billy Meier contact claims, I thought a note of explanation was warranted. In
the words of Robert E. Lee, I didn’t want this fight but the fight is here.

I
had criticized MUFON for the choice of speakers at the recent symposium
thinking that guys claiming to have traveled through time or some such nonsense
were just not credible. Jan Harzan said that they were invited to tell their
stories so that the membership could decide for themselves if there was any
reason to believe them. A nice thought, but I had wondered why the same opportunity
wasn’t extended to Michael Horn who is the official American spokesman for
Billy Meier. Horn responded with a kind note about that.

Then
I created the trouble. In a comment to one of the posts, I wanted it to be
clear that I was not an advocate of Billy Meier. I included what I believed to
be a somewhat innocuous statement. I wrote, “This post was about some of those invited to speak at the next MUFON
Symposium and not an avenue to promote a contactee case that I believe to be
untrue. Let's take it back to that discussion.”

This ignited the
firestorm. I had now defamed Billy Meier. I needed to retract the statement
immediately or offer evidence that Meier was not in contact with alien
creatures (to be fair, they really aren’t creatures but are very human and
speak in the vernacular of the day, but of course that could be translation
trouble rather than their actual words). I really didn’t want to get into this
because it seemed it would be a colossal waste of time. But the attacks became
more vicious and more personal. It was even announced that I would debate
Michael Horn. Of course, I had agreed to no such debate but as Horn told me,
he’d already announced it on his site. That made no difference to me because I
hadn’t even been asked before he made the announcement.

I did mention that I
had read a couple of the books about Meier, but that was rejected as too
little. I needed to retract my statement which was my opinion based on what I
had seen or read. There were demands for evidence that Meier was not in
communication with these aliens. I thought it was they who should be offering
proof that the contacts had taken place. Why, according to them, there were
hundreds of pictures, 125 witnesses, metal from the aliens, and all those
predictions made by Meier which had come true and been confirmed by later
events as we had been told, repeatedly.

There was another
challenge for a debate, this one engineered by Horn with Rob McConnell. I said,
“No.” I could see no good coming from this, but once again Horn had jumped the
gun promoting this debate and then claiming I had backed out. No such thing. I
had never agreed.

In the meantime,
knowing that it was a lost cause, I put together some information about the
Meier contacts, including an article that suggested a number of photographs
that were allegedly taken by Meier had been shown to be fakes. These were blurry,
out of focus, hard to see photographs of many things including satellites in
space, these aliens he was in contact with and even dinosaurs. I was informed
that although the pictures were linked to Meier, he had never taken them. All
these dozens of faked photographs had been planted on Meier with an eye to
discrediting him. The Men in Black had done it. The CIA was responsible for it.
It made no difference that the photographs had originally been credited to
Meier, they were now saying that they had not been taken by him.

In the meantime, Rob
McConnell had worked to set up a debate between Horn and me. I was reluctant
but agreed to do it. Almost the next day, Horn published an article calling me
all sorts of names including a coward. McConnell, incensed by the attack,
cancelled the debate. Please notice here that I didn’t back out of this either.
It was cancelled by the host for reasons that he explained at length in a news
release.

I will note here one
thing that Horn didn’t know because, frankly, it’s none of his business. Many
of the anti-Meier comments to my blog, while interesting and filled with good
information, contained claims I was not comfortable posting such as allegations
of plagiarism by Meier. I have tried to keep everything relevant and have
criticized some of those posting that the tone of the comment was not in
keeping with the civilized discourse that I want on this blog. Some of them
made allegations that while they might be true (though I don’t know they are)
and certainly suggest something about the character of those involved, this
isn’t the place to discuss them. All those comments have been rejected whether
they have come from Horn or others or whether they support Meier or don’t.

I
was looking into some of the claims of Meier (and not allegations about his
personal life), that is his predictions that came out of the contacts and there
were a lot to choose from. I learned that Meier had predicted that the ozone
layer had been damaged and that, according to him, terrestrial scientists were
unaware of this. Turned out, based on documentation, terrestrial scientists
were aware of this and one of the earliest comments was published in 1969,
seven years before Meier mentioned it. Made no difference because the Meier
supporters said that he would have no way of seeing these articles and journal
papers in which this information had been published. The real point, however,
was that the information was out, in the public world before Meier had
addressed the problem, and out there in forms that Meier could have seen.

I
learned that Meier had predicted that Jupiter had more than the 14 moons that
had been found so far in the 1970s. When it happened, that new moons had been
discovered, we were told this confirmed what Meier had said, though we learned
of the new moons from the Voyager space probes which had an additional mission
of finding new Jupiter moons. That mission suggested that our scientists knew
there would be more moons orbiting Jupiter. Meier’s suggestion was not the
reason for this additional research mission and when we looked at some of Meier’s
predictions about Jupiter, we learned they were wrong. There weren’t 17 moons
but nearly 70. The one Meier said was closest to Jupiter was, in fact, third
from that planet.

Io. This is about the only picture Icould find that was somewhatrelevant to this post. NASA photograph.

Meier
also said in his 115th Contact, that “the moon, Io, once was totally
covered with water.” He also had claimed, Io’s ocean was “chiefly potassium
salts and sulfur combinations would constitute the surface [of Io] and deep
into it, and that everything has settled as a very thick crust, after the
masses of water on this satellite had receded.” However, Voyager summary papers
in Science on June 1 and then on
November 23, 1979, cite no evidence that Io ever had a liquid ocean and that
“unlike the other satellites, Io has no water absorption features.”

I
could go on but the spin will start soon.

In
fact, what I found, is that all the websites and information that suggests
Meier is in contact with aliens are traceable back to supporters’ websites. The
independent sites, that have no connection to Meier almost universally dismiss
him. Oh, there are a few exceptions but the arguments used in support are the
same trite and often inaccurate ones used by Meier’s supporters. The
preponderance of the evidence simply does not line up in support of Meier’s claims.

My
point here is that I was challenged to prove that Meier wasn’t in contact with
aliens, which is a very difficult task… Oh, not because he is, but that it is
very hard to prove a negative. The evidence however, such as the doctored and
faked photographs tend to prove he is not. Just how many fakes does it take
before someone says, “This is one too many,” and someone else laughs at the
idea that the Men in Black had faked them to make him look bad.

How
many failed predictions do we need to find before someone says, “This is one
too many.” What we find by looking at many of the predictions is that they
reflect the terrestrial science of the time and not what we know now. Again,
some of the proof revolves around Jupiter’s moons (pun intended), but other proof,
about planets beyond Pluto tells us more. Information about two planets beyond
Pluto was found to have been published seventy years before Meier said a word about
it and we now know that there are not two planets beyond Pluto as he said.
There are three accepted by the IAU and another bunch that are awaiting
confirmation by the IAU. Whatever the final number is, Meier had it wrong.

There
is the metal that was analyzed by Marcel Vogel who had a wonderful career with
IBM (and other places) and who holds a number of patents suggesting that he is
one smart dude. He was a chemist whose interest in luminescence sparked a
number of important discoveries. He also, according to Gary Kinder, in Light Years, analyzed the metal given to
Billy Meier by his Pleiadean pals. Vogel said that the sample contained thulium
but another investigation by the Independent Investigations Group said that the
element was aluminum. Of course, Vogel was involved in a number of “fringe”
investigations so his conclusion about the strangeness of the metal is not
surprising. However, the Independent Investigations Group is an organization of
skeptics who investigatefringe science and extraordinary claims from a rational,scientificviewpoint so that their conclusions are not surprising either. The
problem here is that, according to Kinder, the
sample has disappeared and it seems that no one in the Meier camp is interested
in providing additional samples for independent testing. (Yes, I get that
samples of alien metal are difficult to obtain, but then, Meier’s pals have
supplied him with many opportunities to prove the contact real.)

The real question
here is just how many of these things do we have to show before people realize
that the predictions in the Contacts are not as accurate as have been claimed.
We have found evidence, a preponderance of the evidence, that Meier has
provided no special insight into the things he had discussed, and much can be
traced to the scientific thought and the articles in the popular press at the
time the claims were made. That not only suggests the source, but that his
information did not come from aliens.

But to get back to
the original point… why was my rather benign comment suddenly a point of major
contention? Aren’t I allowed an opinion of my own rather than one forced on me
by the supporters of a rather dubious claim? I mean, all I said was that I
didn’t believe in the contact stories, which, had everyone just let that go,
would have been buried in the comments section of this blog where, in a couple
of weeks, only a few people would see it. Now, thanks to the controversy, there
are multiple postings with evidence suggesting that the Meier story may not be
based in our shared reality. I don’t think this controversy had done much to
change anyone’s mind, but we do have to ask if all the hostility was necessary.
I think not, but the last time I expressed an opinion, some people just went
nuts.

Thursday, August 10, 2017

This
week I reached out to Peter Robbins to talk about his experiences in the world
of the UFO. Yes, I sort of asked the lame question about how he got started but
only because I wasn’t sure how it had happened. That took us into the world of
alien abduction, a place that I hadn’t wanted to visit. But Peter had worked
for a long time with Budd Hopkins, was familiar with the abduction phenomenon,
and had a personal experience with abduction that I thought was interesting.
You can listen to the program here:

For
those who remember, Carol Rainey visited the program about a year ago. She is a
documentary producer who was married to Budd Hopkins for ten years. Her take on
this was somewhat different. For those who missed that program, you can listen
to it here:

We
spent the last part of the program taking about Rendleshaw Forest and the
trouble with Peter’s book (written with Larry Warren). Peter was quite candid
in what he said about it, and that there were things in the book that he now
knows were not true. For more information see:

I
have posted the information that Peter provided to clarify some of the issues
in his book with Warren. They are lengthy posts and in the second part, the
documents did not reproduce properly. They will be missing. They follow this post.

(Blogger's Note: This is Peter Robbins' discussion of what he learned in the decades that followed the publication of his book and attempts to clarify the issues.)

By Peter Robbins

An open letter to my friends and readers, colleagues in ufology, the many UFO
witnesses, experiencers and abductees I count as friends and who I’ve never
met, and most of all to the men and women whose lives were changed forever by
the events of December 1980 in Suffolk England.

For more than a year now a scandal - for there is no other word
that aptly describes it - has been steadily growing in the field of UFO
studies. It is as ugly, contentious, and vicious as we’ve seen, if not
more so, in the seventy years since the so-called Modern Age of UFOs came into
being. And it is spreading. While confined to that specific corner of
ufology alternately known as the Rendlesham Forest UFO incident or the
Bentwaters incident, it continues to draw in good people who have come to
increasingly demonize each other and allow hatred, frustration and fear to rule
their lives.

At the center of this storm of controversy is a man named Larry
Warren. He was my coauthor on a book some of you may have read or heard
about. Its title is Left At East Gate: A First-Hand Account of the
Rendlesham Forest UFO Incident, Its Cover-Up and Investigation.

The investigation itself was begun in 1987 and concluded in 1996.
It was conducted by me and my coauthor, and looking back on what I now know to
be true about the circumstance I had walked into back then, my efforts in many
respects came up woefully short. It is with more than a fair amount of anger,
regret and frustration that I’ve written what you’re about to read, but the
circumstances in question have given me no choice. My purpose in doing so is
nothing less than to stop it in its tracks. If not, this blight will continue
to fester and consume more individuals and that is something I will not and
cannot allow.

The assorted evidence included here is anything but a full
accounting of the outrages in question, but I my efforts will be enough to
assist all of us in bringing this sad ugly affair to an end. I very much regret
that the conclusions I have been forced to arrive at fly in the face of certain
specifics published in Left At East At East Gate and that many of the
falsehoods referred to are ones I stood by as 100% factual and repeatedly
defended over the years, then the decades, some of them not only in Left At
East Gate, but in part in two follow-up books I authored as well. My
unswerving belief in almost all of them had remained the case until said
‘facts’ began to fully unravel for me beginning in the spring of last year.

Since that time I have quietly been struggling to see beyond all of
the malice and misunderstanding that this controversy has generated. I have
done so, if largely in private, in as even-handed a manner as I am capable of,
this with special attention being paid to the part I have played - even if
inadvertently - in misleading what likely amounts to thousands of readers, and
between talks, lectures, and live and broadcast audiences, millions of others.

The focus of this writing though is Larry Warren and his
relationship with the truth regarding Rendlesham, his role in the events of
December 1980, and in some of his unrelated dealings as well. Why bother to
reference any such ‘unrelated matters?’ Because character and honesty go hand
in hand across the board in human behavior, and to my way of thinking we should
be held to the same standards in both our public and private lives as they are
mirror reflections of each other.

Coming to grips with the myriad pieces of information involved has
proven to be one of the greatest, not to mention depressing series of
realizations I have ever had to face as a writer and individual. On a personal
level the experience has closely paralleled the five stages of grief as defined
by Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, a Swiss-American psychiatrist who was a pioneer
in near death studies. The stages as defined by Dr. Kübler-Ross are denial,
anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Those of you who know me will
not be surprised to learn that this past year has been the most introspective,
self-critical, and increasingly disheartening in my forty-year long involvement
in UFO studies and where I go from her I’m not quite sure. But at this point
that means less to me than you might imagine.

I more than appreciate that in the minds of some I may seem too
close to all this to fully apply the rigorous objectivity necessary to come to
the clearest and most accurate conclusions. That’s alright. I am more than
willing to leave any such judgements to you the reader.

My only practical regret in ending this piece where I do is it
leaves out so much of the factual, conclusive evidence others have labored so
long and hard to find, confirm and publish. The best reasons I can give for
this is that every minute I have spent working on this is one I have resented
giving up to yet one more visit to this sordid mess, this after investing
thousands (and likely additional thousands) of hours on defending, supporting,
praising and assisting my former coauthor in his efforts. Writing when you feel
angry and resentful is not necessarily something that makes me write fast, and
that’s the other issue. I set a self-imposed deadline to complete this tonight,
though it’s now well into tomorrow. My reasons for doing so were not arbitrary.
I set off tomorrow for three weeks of work and travel and have no desire or
intention of dragging this millstone with me when I do.

But the ‘dialogue,’ for lack of a better word, between Larry
Warren and his supporters, and those who have completely lost faith in the
published and spoken accounts of his stated role in the events in question, is
now long past the point where any vestige of civility exists between them. The
discourse on both sides long ago turned toxic as nuclear waste, serving no one
and no aim other than to amp up the rancor, hatred and partisanship, and in the
process continue pitting decent people on both sides against each other. There
have been times over this past year when my irregular forays into this swamp of
commentary, claims and counter claims, threats, lies and insults has left me
feeling as though I was going to be physically ill, and with good cause.

Before proceeding on, I think there is something you should know
about me, that is to say about my make-up and character, because it bears upon
the way I have approached writing this and some of the inclusions it contains.

One day when I was a boy of about eight, I returned home from
elementary school looking noticeably disheveled. Not surprisingly my
mother asked me what had happened. I told her I had been in a fight with
another boy, to which she responded, what had been the cause of the fight. As
best as I recall I told her that whatever the reason had been, the other boy
had real problems, ones that I did not have, and that he always seemed angry or
unhappy in class. I wasn’t really sure why we had started to fight, but did not
blame him for it because he was obviously so unhappy. That was my mother’s cue
to tell me about something I later understood to be ‘empathy.’ She explained in
part as the ability to appreciate both sides of an argument, even when you found
yourself squarely on one side or the other. Everyone should have a mother like
I had. I’ve known and understood this about myself since, and there have been
times in my life when this has been a genuine asset. At other times however
this trait has resulted in bouts of inner conflict that have literally pulled
me in two directions at the same time. This has increasingly been the case for
me as I have exhausted every possibility I can think of to understand how I
missed so much along the way, and how I’ve come to see things for what they
really are – not what I thought, hoped and believed they are.

There are those in ufology who have already come on me for not
making a public statement about all this since the brief post I made in early
December, at that time letting anyone interested I had disassociated myself
from Larry both professionally and personally. The most recent criticism - and
it’s a beaut, has come from my friend and colleague Gary Heseltine , a retired
police detective in West Yorkshire who, since retiring, has dedicated himself
to UFO research and to producing the monthly “UFO Truth Magazine,” and an
ongoing series of conferences under the same name. I was and remain proud to
have been the publication’s American correspondent and regular columnist during
the first year of its publication.

On June 3, 2017 Gary posted the following statement. Allow me to
use it as a springboard into the lake of muck we face:

“A Chance Observation:

By chance I was looking at some of the previous issues of UFO
Truth Magazine tonight when I happened to come across an article by Peter
Robbins in issue 2. I was particularly drawn to one paragraph about his initial
relationship with Larry Warren in the 1980s when their collaboration period
began. The following paragraph is a direct quote from his article in issue 2
(July/August 2013).

“When Larry Warren, my co-author on the book Left At East Gate,
and I began our investigation into the Rendlesham Forest incident in the late
1980's I interviewed and re-interviewed him repeatedly regarding his memories
and involvement in the events of December 1980, sometimes to the point of
distraction. But he was almost always a good sport about it and put up with my
repeated enquiries.”

Thus it now begs the question, how when you've questioned LW 'to
the point of distraction' that you could have been 'deceived' which you now
claim? At the time of writing this article your collaboration period was at the
24 year point. Yet, just four years on and having written three books, all
about LW and his involvement the RFI I might add, you now find you have been
'deceived' by LW for 28 years! It seems to me that you are either the world's
worst judge of character or when some ill-judged questions, most of which hold
little or no evidential credence in relation to LW's RFI involvement you chose
to cut him loose to the gang of wolves with a malicious agenda (i.e. condemn
him as a liar, a fraud, a conman first, then claim in the next breath that
'their aim was only to seek the truth!) or when the going got tough you cast
him aside in a desperate attempt to save your professional reputation.”

While some may see Gary’s remarks as particularly harsh, I
continue to consider him my friend and someone whose commitment to ufology is
beyond question. I more than understand his frustration with my silence and
likely would feel the same toward him if our positions were reversed. Some
years back Gary singled out and championed a particular piece of evidence which
I had been attempting to bring to the attention of a wider audience. It is a
handwritten letter Larry Warren wrote to his mother in January 1981, about a
week after the UFO incidents had transpired. While this has yet to be
forensically analyzed, neither Gary nor I are in doubt as to its authenticity.
What my friend and colleague seems to have failed to recognize is that simply
because the letter is authentic does not mean that everything else Warren has
said or written follows in kind. Far from it.

If Gary takes the time to reread it he will observe that at no
time does the writer say or even imply that he was personally involved or
actually present. Not that he wasn’t, but all it actually establishes is that
Larry was aware of fact and some of the particulars involved. We know for a
fact that he called his mother from a base phone as his mother’s friend Sue
Hickerson was visiting at the time and has confirmed that his mother received
that call, though it was cut off almost immediately. Larry also had a witness
with him when he made the call, that being Greg Battram, a fellow SP (USAF
Security Police member).

But you Gary might have been better served to quote me from a
passage that appears on page 212 of Left At East Gate rather than the
one you selected. It describes my first impression of my future coauthor who I
briefly met in 1984 at a town meeting in Westchester, New York, during the
so-called Westchester overflights of large black, unidentified
triangular-shaped craft. Larry had just come out under his own name rather than
as the witness ‘Art Wallace’ named in the News of the World’s initial
coverage of the Rendlesham incident the previous October:

“For a controversial witness, Larry Warren appeared
straightforward enough. He seemed to be answering the questions as best he
could and didn't put on airs. If what he was saying was true, he had a lot of
guts to come forward. If he was relating a delusion, or just plain lying, he
certainly was good at it.”

And Gary, he wasn’t just good at it, he was the best. Perhaps an
experienced police detective like you might have seen through some part of his
self-assured initial account that I missed. But when someone is fully committed
to intentionally deceiving you from the start, this is especially problematic,
especially for a well-meaning, self-trained investigator inclined to trust
someone who was so intensely and self-assuredly committed to their account of
things.

You write that I am

“either the world's worst judge of character or when some
ill-judged questions, most of which hold little or no evidential credence in
relation to LW's RFI involvement you chose to cut him loose to the gang of
wolves with a malicious agenda (i.e. condemn him as a liar, a fraud, a conman
first, then claim in the next breath that 'their aim was only to seek the
truth!) or when the going got tough you cast him aside in a desperate attempt
to save your professional reputation.”

First, the questions you refer to are not “ill judged.” They are
not and if you take the time to look into them yourself you would find yourself
coming to the same damned realizations I’ve been forced to acknowledge. Nor am
I “the world’s worst judge of character.” Far from it. However when it came to
ultimately falling into line with the now hopelessly intertwined nature of the
true/untrue account I continued to encounter in our ongoing interviews, his
stare-me-in-the-eyes insistence that he was telling the truth and nothing but
the truth finally won me over. And I can tell you for an absolute fact that
each member of that “the gang of wolves with a malicious agenda” you refer to
started out as a supporter of Larry Warren, proud to know him and in the
overwhelming majority of cases proud to call him a friend as well, if only on
Facebook. If you dig deeper you will see where their malice really stems from.

Your next assertion, that there is “little or no evidential
credence in relation to LW's RFI involvement” is simply wrong my friend.
Take the time to review the particulars like I finally did and you will find
that there is evidence in every sense included, even if supplied in part by
people whose flat-out hatred of Larry may leave you feeling disgusted. I’ve
been where you are now, and for months upon months leading up to writing this.
When I finally forced myself to the confirmed facts they had established
I had no choice but to change my mind. When you were a detective did you ever
decide to ignore potentially important evidence in an investigation simply
because the source was in some manner morally objectionable or personally
repugnant to you? No need to answer that rhetorical question. I know you well
enough to know the answer is no.

As to your writing that I “cast him aside in a desperate attempt
to save your professional reputation?” Please. Regarding Left At East
Gate, what remains of what I’ll laughingly call my ‘professional
reputation’ does not really matter all that much to me anymore. I know that I
may well go down as one of, if not the biggest prat in UFO investigative history,
but that’s water under the bridge now and I can only take responsibility for
the long list of investigative oversights I am guilty making a quarter century
ago and the successful bamboozling I was subjected to year after year. The
question is no longer 'what is true about Larry's story', or ‘story,’ as the
case may be, and there are many truths that still stand for me. The only
question now is what he has lied about and the confirmable evidence that
supports the many allegations of deception perpetrated on all of us by him, in
our book and otherwise. With respect, I think you have allowed yourself to fall
victim to one of Stanton T. Friedman’s central tenants of debunkers, of all
things: “Don’t bother me with the facts. My mind's already made up.”

I know you, as well as I’m able, that you see yourself standing up
for a wronged if imperfect and troubled witness and friend seemingly under
attack from all directions by the “gang of wolves” you’ve referred to, and I
can only respect you for that. But be warned. You are being ‘played,’ to use
one of Larry’s favorite expressions. I’m sorry to have to tell you that the
over past few years some of the comments he’s made about you in his Facebook
messages and phone calls to me have been far from flattering. His phone remarks
you will have to take my word for, but his written ones would be easy enough to
establish with a series of screen grabs, that is if he had not blocked me from
his page sometime last month.

When I finally ended our Facebook friendship and in effect our
actual friendship on or about January 3rd, I made a point of not blocking him
from my page. I have no problem even now with him visiting it whenever he
likes. The only thing that has ever mattered to me in case investigation in
general and the RFI in specific is the truth, wherever it may take us and
whomever it may show in a good or bad light. I’m sure you and I are united in
this belief. I think these next few paragraphs serve to illustrate how I came
to find myself in the place I’m writing from:

“Larry arrived Friday afternoon, July 3, 1987. Though glad to see
him, it was quite clear that I really didn't know whom I had invited to my
apartment. Only two things seemed {emphasis mine} certain about Larry
Warren -- he had been through something in December of 1980, and he was still
very angry about it. What had he been through in England? What effect had it
had on his life? What effect did it have on his present state of mind? More,
how curious was I to find out? At once both open and guarded, things lay behind
things with him.

Whoever he was, he had brought along a pile of reading for me, all
of it on Bentwaters. We talked our way through a number of subjects over a
great Japanese dinner. The conversation continued late into the night and, next
morning over breakfast, picked up where we'd left off. His account of the
incident was riveting, never more so than the few times he veered away from
giving me a direct answer. My impression {emphasis mine} of him was
consistent: I was not being lied to, but he had more to tell. What though, was
I to make of the information he was giving me?

Not counting breaks, our first "interview" ran the full
weekend. That Sunday afternoon, I finally asked him why he was telling me all
this? Larry answered that he was looking for someone to write a book with and
thought I might be that person. After hearing me speak in Washington, he'd
decided to ask if I was interested.

I did understand that all his cards were not on the table. If I
accepted the offer, what exactly would I be agreeing to? After all, the
guy was talking about being a principal in his own book, and that could get
touchy. And was an independent co-author with latitude what he really had in
mind? What if the trail led somewhere he didn't want it to go? What if I found
out he had been wrong about things, or that he'd been lied to, or that he'd
lied? The man might even be some kind of Bentwaters "wannabe" -- on
base that night but not involved, then telling the stories he'd heard as though
they'd happened to him. Any of these possibilities were valid, but I didn't
think any of them were likely {emphasis mine}.

I asked the questions I had to and got more encouraging answers
than I'd expected. What Larry proposed was simply that he tell his own story,
in his own terms. I would be free to chronicle, support, or refute whatever I
could about the incidents and his part in them. Though we should stay open to
the other's suggestions, each of us would have our own last word on anything we
wanted to include. When the book sold, we would split whatever it made.

Larry's offer was worth considering, but there was risk attached.
Such a collaboration would be like starting a small business with a stranger;
but that was the least of it.

For those of us who make it our business to look into such things,
a storm of controversy had already swirled around the Bentwaters incidents for
several years. Having one of the witnesses, or alleged witnesses, as co-author
was just asking for trouble. Larry couldn't have agreed more. Such a book could
take some time to complete, maybe even a year or two. Given the circumstances,
could we both stick with it that long?

Another sticking point: I didn't see myself well-suited to the
job. Larry should have been looking for a different sort of writer; perhaps one
who had actually written a book. If it had been me, I would have tried to
enlist a good investigative reporter. What he did not need was a coauthor who
also had a UFO incident in his past. I just didn’t think the
"coincidence" would wash with a lot of people. But all these
objections were subordinate to a larger question: if I agreed, how far was I
willing to go for this story? If only a tenth of what he claimed were true...” (LAEG,
pages 214-215)

If only I had paid more attention to the doubts that had nagged at
me back then.

Jumping to the present, some of you may have already read the
article that appeared in the UK tabloid the Mirror, I believe on May 29th You
can read it at http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/ufo-expert-accuses-co-author-10527844. Reporter John Jeffay
obviously made the decision to ignore the specifics and complexities I
discussed in the radio interview which sparked the writing of this piece, and
which he mined for selective information, this with no interest in actually
speaking with me. Then again, why would he have bothered? It was only a ‘UFO
story’ and the Mirror is not known for its high journalistic standards. In
publishing his well-off-the-mark and highly generalized version of things he
insulted both me and Larry. In my case by putting words in my mouth that made
it appear that I had “..sparked a war of words after revealing he now believes
that former US airman Larry Warren's account of the incident near RAF
Bentwaters, Suffolk, in 1980, was "not true."

The story of course hurt Larry more for obvious reasons. Small
consolation, but in the interests of accuracy I stated that I am convinced that
parts of Larry’s account are not accurate or faithful to the truth. And the
Mirror being the Mirror, you should also know that no journalist or reporter by
the name of John Jeffay is employed by the Mirror. There is little question
that this story was brought to the attention of the Mirror’s editors by someone
outside the newspaper’s staff. I can make an educated guess as to who it may
have been, but cannot say for sure.

Larry Warren and I first met one-to-one as previously noted on
July 3 1987, this at my apartment on West 46th St. in Manhattan. He was living
with his first wife in Connecticut at the time. Also as previously noted, he
showed up with an assortment of reading material for me at that visit. It
included a small assortment of articles that had been published on the UFO
incident and his copy of Sky Crash by Suffolk paranormal researcher
Brenda Butler, her friend and colleague Dot Street, and Jenny Randles, the
best-known of the three and already a prolific writer on the subject of the UFO
phenomenon.

At the time, there had not been very much published on the RFI, at
least that I was aware of. What my memory is a little hazy on is whether or not
it was at that meeting or during his next foray into New York City that he
loaned me copies of some of his assorted military paperwork, all of which he
told me he had made copies of during his out-processing from the Air Force, but
I am sure that he brought them on one of those two initial visits.

A thought that never occurred to me at the time – or in fact at any
time since then, until earlier this year when I finally bothered to
actually read some of the findings that had been posted online. Call me naïve,
but I just don’t think that way. The paperwork he loaned me was almost entirely
Xerox copies, but there were a few originals, which were returned to him
several years later. If he (or anyone else) had altered any part of any
of them it would amount to a betrayal of the highest order, certainly for
me as his co-writer, but more importantly, to any reader who had ever served or
was currently serving in the military, American or otherwise. Such an offense
is simply not forgivable. I’m sorrier than I can say that I now know this to be
the case regarding at least several of these documents, but before damning
Larry with such an awful accusation, there is one other alternate theory you
need to consider, and consider seriously. Last month Larry was a guest on UK
radio host Ben Emlyn-Jones' radio program, on May 29 if I’m correct. His
remarks included an assortment of attacks and sleazy suggestions regarding my
character and honesty. If you haven’t listened to them you should. I’d intended
to respond to all of them here but time has closed in on me have precluded
that. I’ll be glad to do so in some future radio interview though. It’s an
understatement to say that I did not know him nearly as well as I thought I
did. But it seems he did not know me as well as he thought he did either. I
think he actually thought that, as his stories began to unravel, I would stick
with him because I’d be too embarrassed not to, seeing my professional
reputation go down with his ship. He couldn’t have been more wrong:

Excerpt from Larry's Odd Couple Video Statement to me.

“You know you sent me those letters back in October {actually back
in October and December} and I was waiting to get a letter through the mail box
believe it or not. {reference to an innocent party that has nothing to do with
the actual content of this communication. If Larry feels otherwise I invite him
to add it to the public record} … So when you tell me 'mail' and you know I am
not a computer guy.

So I am waiting for the postman to come, they still have them in
England and the post never came, but what you did so because you had a little
hissy fit because I didn’t respond to you quick enough, ah life goes on, I have
a teenage son and you know they involve a lot of effort when they are at that age.
I have a mother in the hospital with dementia, we are always hearing about your
family and I love them too, I've got problems in my family like everyone's got
problems in their family, mother with dementia which you are well aware of,
this that and the other... I don’t make this a public thing, you tend to do a
lot of that. It's just not my style! But I'm kinda surprised you sent all this
private correspondence but you sent them to everybody before I ever got them,
it's almost a blackmail kinda thing. We had that issue back in 88 over the
phone bill thing, but we won’t go into that here. My mother sure would, if she
had a memory.”

All that talk about letters but not a word in reference to the
contents of either. Larry is a master of ‘look over here, not over there,’ and
would be more than happy to keep you in the dark as to what those letters
actually said, but that is a concession he is no longer entitled to. Larry
would have you believe that I “sent them to everybody before I ever got them,”
This is nonsense on two counts. When, after three weeks of not hearing back
from him after sending him my letter of October 3rd, I wrote asking him what
his thoughts were about what I had said, he told me he never received it as he
goes on about above. I immediately responded with an extremely easy to see
screen grab of it as a screengrab attached to the brief Facebook message it was
attached to. But as he refused to acknowledge this, I sent the letter on to two
people who he is extremely close to, one at his request as he would be visiting
with that person over the coming weekend.

Let me say that I agonized over the contents of that letter and
took several weeks to write it. This had followed about five months of
escalating tensions between us and in composing my thoughts I consulted with
two mutual friends of ours, both of whom appreciated the sensitivity of what I
wanted to say to him. Both advised me to do so with a maximum of kindness and
understanding, and to the greatest degree possible, to be brief in doing so. I
took the first two parts of their advice to heart, but ‘brief’ was a challenge
I was unable to live up to. What follows is that letter. The only edits I have
made in references to completely innocent parties, an edit of something I had
been incorrect about regarding one of Larry’s ‘enemies,’ then corrected and
acknowledged in the second letter I sent. He is welcome to go public with any
of what I have not included if he feels that I have in any way done so to hide
or otherwise deceive you about the contents of this communication. Otherwise
this is what I had to say:

Dear Larry,

As you know, last night was the Jewish new year’s eve, Rosh
Hashonah. I had no plan or intention of adding any drama in sending it on the
first day of the new-year. That’s just how long it took to write, just the way
it worked out. But you know what? It is the first day of the new-year,
more than appropriate for me to begin this with some special Rosh Hashonah
thoughts for you. This holiday calls on us to examine our lives, our role in
society, and our relations with our neighbors. A time that we reflect on what
is most important to us. {Note to readers: While Larry is not Jewish, I am, and
during our long friendship, and through other Jewish friends has developed a
genuine knowledge about this ancient religion and its beliefs.}

Rosh Hashonah is a time for remembrance. Remembering better,
warmer days. Remembering our successes and failures. We remember the challenges
we faced in being a friend, family member, co-worker, parent, neighbor and/or
public figure. We remember people we once loved but who live no more. Rosh
Hashonah is at once a day to take stock of the past and a chance to dream of a
new beginning. We remember our achievements, our victories and our generous
actions to others, large and small. We reflect on our moments of weakness, the
times we could have, should have done better. The times we should have tried
harder and didn’t. The times we could have acted with more compassion but
didn’t. The things we regret having done. … And it’s done so in a way that
doesn’t shame, berate or condemn. Instead, we acknowledge our humanness. We
appreciate that we all have to grapple with our own personal struggles.

At Rosh Hashonah we are called upon to perform acts of compassion,
kindness, and justice every day. We come face-to-face with our innermost
nature. We ask ourselves if we have acted honorably and honestly in our
dealings with others. We look back on episodes we have come to regret. We
understand that we cannot change the world and we cannot change others until we
understand and forgive ourselves, for all those things we need forgiving on.
But this day is not about the past. What is done is done. Rosh Hashonah is a
time to forgive ourselves and others, amend our wrongdoings where possible,
then move on. I’m going to try and keep all of this in mind as I give this
letter a final read-through.

Congratulations again on your award from Gary. It’s just a shame
it took so long for a group or conference to so acknowledge you.

Yes, I again ignored your most recent Skype request. The reason, I
still didn’t want to talk to you. The reason I don’t want to talk to you,
because you lied to me, to my face in Glasgow, and in FB messages beforehand.
You may consider them minor lies, but they were major to me, in fact they were
life-changing. Early in June, and for a number of reasons having to do with
you, I began thinking more and more about the future of our friendship and
professional relationship, both of which are in real trouble as far as I’m
concerned. As such, we need to get a few things understood between us. Having
to write this up has been even less enjoyable than being compelled to write Deliberate
Deception or Halt In Woodbridge. I have repeatedly put off doing so
because frankly I hate the time I must spend on it because I hate the
way it feels. I know that 29 years of ingrained habit and behavior have
something to do with it, as does a complex history of friendship and
antagonisms, and a long instilled sense of loyalty. As the ‘X-Files’ poster
says, I want to believe, and as your coauthor, co-speaker and limited business
partner, I wanted to believe that you were 100% honest with me in matters
relating to us. Increasingly these past few months I have been struggling to
resolve, if resolution were even possible, my growing number of differences
with you, but it’s almost like you have gone out of your way to make this all
as difficult as possible for me, if not impossible.

Our friendship was built on decades of working together through
thick and thin, during which time I thought we more than earned each other’s
respect. But as far as I’m concerned your respect for me went out the window
this summer, a most troubling part being that you don’t even seem to realize
it. I am really worried about you. You will always have my respect for the
courage, commitment, and single-minded dedication you’ve shown in bringing the
RFI to public attention. And while I love you my friend, I do not even like the
person at least part of you seems to have become, that being the part who lies
to his friends, fakes things, threatens violence and extreme violence, and
blames others for events and circumstances they brought on themselves or were
otherwise you responsible for. {Note: The final part of the last
sentence was meant to have read, “…and blames others for events and
circumstances that you brought on yourself or were otherwise
responsible for.” My tiredness was showing here.}

As you know, I took your threatening, ultra-paranoid ultimatum of
July 14 as seriously as a heart attack. Yes, I know that you wish you had never
sent it, but you did and it still has me fuming. If I’d have sent it to you, I
think you’d feel the way I do, “to be honest it aintv very good mate ! im not
happy nor is my family with youre folks tell john mooore to piss off

DONT EVEN CONTACT ME
AGAIN..........................................PETER I MEAN IT PISS OFF !

who knows what that was ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,but pete the only contact
you n me will have is with lawyers..........dont send me shit and stop showim
MY shit ! we are OVER

After all I’ve done for you and all we have been through together,
that you would go off on me like this, that you would dare accuse me of such
things still amazes me. I never did anything to deserve this kind of treatment
from you and I’m certainly not going to put myself in the position where you
can ever pull anything like that on me again. The level your normally violent
temper has risen to, your often completely irrational paranoia toward me and
others, these things never really made sense to me except as an indication of
some deeper problems. Whatever their causes may be, I am tired of dealing with
them and do not want to have to ever again.

The thing that seems to have set you off on your July 14 rant was
imagining, and I stress the word “imagining” here, that John and I were somehow
out to get you or to fuck you over in the making of the documentary he had
intended to produce, for what purpose or what aim I have no idea. This while
I’d specifically included the following along with the link I sent to you:
“Just to give you an idea of what he's thinking in terms of, check out the link
that follows. Its NOT footage or stills he'll necessarily be using, but just
a working idea of the format, 'feeling,' content, etc he's interested in
using to focus on the LAEG story” (italics mine). Larry, the one thing
John wanted more than anything was simply to hear from you. To hear something,
anything from you. A self-motivated action indicating if you
still had a genuine, actual interest in committing to a project he considered
the most important of his professional career. John and I were sure committed
to it. But as has happened with us in past, I was again obligated to act as
go-between because you do not use email. You’ve then complained to me about
feeling left out, cut out, not being consulted on and/or not being kept
up-to-date about.

FYI John has had nothing but respect and admiration for you from
the first time he read Left At East Gate some years back up until last
month when you couldn’t be bothered to send him a note, see him, or even speak
to him while visiting his hometown. There is no question in my mind that this
extremely talented and dedicated man would have raised the substantial amount
of money necessary with the Canadian government likely underwriting part of the
production. Early this year I spent hours and hours going through every single
box of LAEG-related material I’d collected in 29 years, including copies
of every single audiotape, still photo, VHS tape, DVD of film, TV, conference,
documentary or self-shot footage I had that we appeared in, all for John to
take home, review, digitally transfer where necessary, then - with our approval
- include clips from in his film. The attention he paid to each piece of
material he went thru or filmed during the time he spent here in February was
impressive to say the least and he departed for Toronto with both of us excited
and optimistic about this once-in-a-lifetime project.

In the event you’ve forgotten, early last year before we decided
to drop John’s offer to pursue Peter B’s feature film option (and don’t we wish
we hadn’t), John sent us a draft for a contract. Bob Freedman reviewed it in
detail, communicated with John about it, and felt it was definitely in our
interests to move forward on. You were sent copies of all communications
between them, them and me, and of course a copy of the contract draft itself. I
also sent you a copy of the detailed working outline for the documentary that
John and I had put together, this subject to any changes, adjustments,
additions, ideas or whatever else that you wanted to make. The draft
made clear that we would have each been paid for our participation in the
project. When you asked me for John’s contact information just before you and
Dennis departed for Toronto (or once you were there? I forget) I thought, maybe
there was still a chance you were going to connect with him and pull this out
of the fire. All you had to do was ask Sid to email him for his phone number,
but you chose to let it slide, and with it, what could have been a feature
documentary every bit as good as ‘Travis’ if not better. You and your paranoia
were responsible for torpedoing this great project and not John or me. All I
can add is that it’s a damn shame.

In past when I’ve asked what you thought my ‘agenda’ was, you’ve
always gone quiet. You said in a July message that I never really ‘got you,’
and I guess that’s proved to be something of an understatement. I did ‘get’
some of you, but looking back I don’t seem to have been nearly as good an
investigator as I thought I was a quarter century ago. But I have always had
‘an agenda.’ Corny as it may sound, it has always been to follow the evidence
wherever it leads you, then to tell the truth about it as best I’m able.
This even when evidence takes you to places you would rather not go. It’s
the reason I choose to correct my errors in public, be they mistakes I
discovered after the fact or ones brought to my attention by others. Maybe most
important, there has never been a clause excluding truths that might prove
embarrassing to me, or for that matter, to you, and that’s what this has all
come down to.

I want to keep what I have to say as focused as I can. I have come
to a point in my life where I no longer have any interest in researching, investigating
or otherwise actively studying that thing alternatively known as the Woodbridge
Lights, the RAF Bentwaters incident, or the Rendlesham Forest UFO incident. I
will not doubt be compelled to talk about aspects of RFI now and again, return
to Deliberate Deception and Halt In Woodbridge again, especially
now that Charles Halt’s book is out or about to be published, but otherwise
have no desire whatsoever to wade back out into RFI research and investigation.
And while my career in UFO studies may take a hit as a result, I could care
less. There are other areas of UFO studies I’m involved in or that interest me.
More important, I want to get on with a life beyond Bentwaters. To some degree
at least I have forced myself to follow the general dialogue, various attacks
and counter-attacks, assorted posts as well as parts of ‘Left Out of east Gate’
etc. It’s just that ‘dialogue,’ your part as well as the voices of assorted
others, has succeeded in all but killing the interest I had had in the subject
for so long. But first I gear up for one more round of RFI investigative work,
once again dedicated to substantiating my coauthor’s claims if at all possible.

As you know I specifically zeroed in one of the photos I found on
Sacha’s website, the one purporting to be of you and John Lennon.